There were strong Pokemon and there weak Pokemon, as many Pokemon liked to believe. Amelia the Mawile, on the other hand, believed completely the opposite - there is no stronger or weaker Pokemon in the world, only Pokemon who choose to be strong or weak. That said, when she met a rather pessimistic Sableye named Sapphira who believed her species very weak, she couldn’t help but be rather annoyed by the Sableye’s complaints about the recent reemergence of Fairy magicks - that having no weaknesses was the only thing going for her, that now any fairy could decimate her in battle, that there should have been discovered a mega stone for her species as well as for others like Mawiles.

That was just truly pessimistic, Amelia thought. The only thing the Mawile could do to alleviate this was train Sapphira to be stronger. So that’s just what she decided to do.

Sapphira knocked on Amelia’s door as the sun was rising over the horizon. The Mawile was in her mega form when the door opened, to which the Sableye took a step back. “Woah! Careful! you remember what happened the last time you attacked me in your mega form!”

Amelia nodded. “Ya, ya, I know. You transmutated and my power went out of control and you almost outgrew the universe and blah blah blah.”

Sapphira shook her head in disapproval, finding fault in Amelia’s lax view of her macro powers. Some unknown time ago, the Sableye had unintentionally binded to herself the genetic code of a Deoxys who, essentially, was all-powerful in that it could macro to any size without limit. The Deoxys had previously lost its sanity and a series of events led it to crash land on the world as a gemstone meteor. Sapphira had happened across the meteor and devoured it, as most Sableyes have a taste for gemstones and minerals. Thus, Sapphira gained the Deoxys’ macro powers. A few incidents occurred infrequently, but in this world things had a way of “going back to normal,” thankfully. Amelia, finding great interest in macro abilities, studied Sapphira’s power and learned to recreate it using Fairy magicks. Other than their first test of Amelia’s newfound skill, this would be their first time experiencing macro growth in each other’s presence.

Sapphira grew almost by instinct when she felt threatened - It was a defense mechanism that could crush any threat. Amelia felt it wouldn’t be enough some day, and she believed that Sapphira would have to be able to at least take a few blows like some Sableye could. On her own and under motivation, the Sableye could actually grow really big really quickly. Amelia had done some practice with her Macro magicks so that she could hopefully keep up with the Sableye - Sapphira was very experienced with growth, so much so that Amelia figured she could stand higher than the atmosphere in more-or-less thirty seconds. Amelia figured attaining such mastery of Macro would take her months, but she could at least keep up with Sapphira if things got out of hand during training. Somewhat, anyhow.

Amelia took Sapphira out behind her house to a training arena - a simple circle of packed dirt. The ring was surrounded with training equipment - a rack of interesting tools and weapons built next to the house, on the other side of the yard a tool shed undoubtedly filled with even more items of combat. “Training starts now!” Amelia declared. “We’ll start with something simple: Sableye are among the Pokemon who can use an opponent’s physical strength against them. That said, we’re going to teach you how to use a technique called Foul Play.”

"What I want to know is how you intend to teach me the move when you don't know it yourself." Sapphira replied, calling the Mawile out on a particularly important issue. Neither of them had access to any technology that magically taught someone a move, Sapphira assumed, and it wasn’t like Amelia was a master of all moves like a Ditto potentially could be. "Mawiles can't Play Foul, as much as their 'deception' categorizing suggests they should."

"What I will show you is technique. I was in an organization where an understanding of all known Move techniques was a necessity, and that of Foul Play will be simple.” The group she referred to was the Shadowsayers, an elite team of vigilante Pokemon who were contracted by the ruling parties of Statera to, without any specifics, keep the peace - not all justice could be for the sake of both good and order, after all. “Take a fighting pose." Amelia instructed her new pupil.

Sapphira did as she was instructed, spreading her legs to firm her stance and holding her arms out on either side of her. Amelia rushed forward and jabbed her hands at Sapphira, stopping just short of the Sableye's shoulders and causing the Sableye a six foot growing spurt as she fell down on her butt. "What the hell, Amelia?!" Sapphira yelled, her enlarged voice booming. 

"Did you notice my technique?" Amelia asked. The Mawile held her arms out and summoned her Fairy Magicks, which were all the more intense since she was in her Mega form. Her body grew and adjusted to Sapphira's newfound height, making the Mawile about eight feet tall in total. Amelia gave her trainee a hand in getting up. "I aimed to turn your strength against you by hitting your most critical points, in that case your shoulders. The key to Foul Play is to find weak spots in their stance and exploit them. Usually, a joint works best. I'll demonstrate again." Amelia asked Sapphira to reassume her pose and she did, to which Amelia responded with another demonstration. This time she went for the upper legs, where they met the Sableye's body. As Amelia suspected, the Sableye grew again in a knee-jerk reaction, this time adding eight feet to her height for a total of fifteen feet, taller than Amelia's meger house. The Mawile grew again to rejoin her.

Sapphira assumed her fighting pose yet again. "So if I do this," she thrust her fingers at Amelia's shoulder "It'll do a lot of damage?"

“That’s the idea.” Amelia replied. “However, you also need to summon your dark energy to perform the action. That part you have to figure out on your own.”

Sapphira scowled. “I thought you were supposed to teach me how to do that!”

“When I was in training, we learned from this Ditto who had to constantly refer to an archive of move techniques to show us how to summon the powers, however ninety percent of the time he told us ‘the power is in you, and all you have to do is focus your efforts.’ That’s essentially all I’m asking you to do.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

“Just focus, and put some effort into it.” Amelia insisted. Sapphira shook her head in distaste and tried her method - the only question was what to focus on. Summoning power? making some sort of attack? Questions ran through her mind until eventually she settled on ‘using Foul Play.’ Taking her fighting pose again, she rushed forward and jabbed at Amelia’s shoulder. Two things happened at once - Sapphira felt her arms fill with great strength and she  managed to land Amelia square on the shoulder, and Amelia, wearing a sly face, grabbed Sapphira’s arm and tugged at it, throwing Sapphira off her balance before tripping the Sableye up, another growth spurt occurring in the process. “Gotta be able to counter or get away when you get close to an enemy.” Amelia told her, growing more to match her trainee. The Sableye quickly got on her feet and rushed at Amelia again and repeatedly jabbed at her shoulders. The Mawile sidestepped each of her attacks, occasionally grabbing the Sableye’s arm’s to counter with some punches of her own.

They sparred like this for about a minute, each of the Pokemon managing to land blows on the other infrequently, Amelia more so than Sapphira. Eventually, Amelia changed tactics and jabbed under her opponent’s legs, sliding underneath the Sableye and forcing her off her feet. Skillfully and without a single flaw in her movement, Amelia grabbed Sapphira’s leg and flipped the Sableye over her, slamming her face-first into the ground as she would a plank of wood. “Down.” She said, letting her opponent’s leg go and indicating their spar over.

Sapphira groaned and got on her feet, rubbing her non-existent nose. “Ow… what was that for?”

“We were sparring and I took advantage of an opening.” Amelia answered. “You have to keep an eye on every one of your opponents movements or, if you can’t, learn to recover quickly. On that note, we should now teach you how to use Recover. It’s a rare move that is seen as a great advantage in Pokemon who possess the ability.”

Sapphira was in the process of dusting herself off, occasionally licking some dust off her fingers, when she said “I’m not sure if I can actually learn that move. Isn’t that move something you have to inherit, or something?”

Amelia nodded her head and turned to her house. At that point, she realized that they had grown even more - they were as tall as the nearby mountains, and it was obvious by the wreckage that one of them had stepped on her house during the spar. Sighing, she shifted through the wreckage and picked up a tiny object from the remains of her room. Amelia turned around to show the object to Sapphira and said “This is something for you to eat - it’s mineral flavored, whatever that is, so you don’t have to worry about bad taste - I made it with fairy magicks and the assistance of an Alakazam with the move among his abilities. Just eat it - you should feel its effects immediately.

Sapphira shook her head, unsure. “I hope you remember what happened the first time you used fairy magic on me.” She said, recalling a previous meeting between the two Pokemon where Amelia’s use of a fairy type move against the Sableye caused an odd transmutation in the ghost Pokemon. It was certainly unexpected, but all Amelia could make of it was that it was an equivalent of mega-evolution in a less stable form. Transmutation was an ancient advancement, one that had been forbidden in Amelia’s homeland. The process required a focus and a conduit - the focus was the genetic information used to make the desired changes to one’s body, usually stored in the form of an orb, and a conduit consisted of two - one if another Pokemon volunteered to wear the conduit - smaller gems usually placed in armbands for the transmuting pokemon to wear. There were other ways of achieving transmutation, but they were often unstable and inconsistent with their effects - apparently, Sapphira coming into contact with fairy magicks being used by a Pokemon, in the aforementioned case Amelia, was one of those anomaly-esque methods.

"I assure you, Sapphira, that this won't cause that.” Amelia insisted. “The transmutation would require a conduit, as well as a focus. In that incident, my fairy magicks were the focus and my body was the conduit. This time I took precautions and took my body out of the equation. Just consume it and the ability will come to you mentally, like a download to your head - many psychic abilities rely on mental action rather than physical."

Her arguments put aside, Sapphira took the tiny orb - really to her it was like a grain of sand - and put it in her mouth. An alien force came upon her mind but it left as quickly as it had came, leaving behind a new thought - "I know Recover." She muttered.

"Draw on that thought and utilize the move to heal your bruises." Amelia explained. 

Sapphira clung to the new thought and felt an aura envelop her. The rocky flesh of her bruises disintegrated in favor of new skin, the dull pain in her body subsiding. In addition to her new bruises, Sapphira could feel little chips and scratches in her body filling in and repairing themselves. Then all at once the aura faded. “Excelent. Halfway there.” Amelia commented.

Sapphira inspected her body for all the scars that she remembered she had - being a macro didn’t go without very minor injuries. All of the scars that she could remember were gone, completely smooth rock skin filling its place. Not a flaw could be found. “This is pretty cool.” She mumbled, looking at her body as if it was the first time she saw it.

"Recovery is a fascinating technique." Amelia commented. "What I wouldn't give to experience it myself, although theoretically you could cause another Pokemon to undergo the process if you possessed them."

A shiver went through Sapphira’s spine. “I don’t feel like doing that.” The Sableye said frankly.

“Fair enough. On to the next technique. What I want you to do is channel your energy into… ahm…” Amelia paused, tapping her giant fingers together in thought. “Well… here’s the thing. I want you to channel your energy into… something that you will be imagining. Like, think of a little made up animal or thing and pretend you’re holding it, then focus on that imaginary animal.”

“This is starting to sound less like training and more like some sort of therapy session.” Sapphira commented. Never-the-less, she followed her tutor’s instructions. Holding her arms out to grab her imaginary thought, she focused her thoughts on a dinosaur. She wasn’t sure what dinosaur she would go with… perhaps a Tyrantrum. “Now… pretend that the object is a physical one. Really imagine it, really make yourself think that you’re holding it. When you do that, let your mind slip into it.” Sapphira concentrated hard on the imaginary figure and put herself in its place. She let herself imagine she was actually in the dinosaur’s place… until without warning a faint silhouette of a Tyrantrum became visible. It only lasted for half a moment but it was there! “What was that?” Sapphira asked.

“A substitute.” Amelia answered. “This technique will be a little more difficult because it relies directly on your mental capabilities, and making a little ‘pill’ to give you that would have consequences far too elaborate to go into. The idea is that by placing a small part of your consciousness into a false persona, you can force your opponent to attack a dummy target while you do whatever it is you need to do without sustaining too much damage. It takes a good portion of stamina to perform, but because you have the ability to Recover you can essentially tank most blows.”

Though she was impressed, Sapphira had one concern. “Hiding behind a dummy doesn’t exactly make me strong.” The Sableye commented. “If anything, it seems like it would make me a coward.”

“Having good tactics is not the same as being a coward, Sapph. Quite the opposite - I will say for the sake of my sanity that you race is NOT that strong - they’re balanced in their strengths. Your race evolved defensive techniques like the ones i’m teaching you to either trick their foes or take advantage of them. Why do you think you’re part Dark type?”

“I don’t know!” Sapphira exclaimed.

“Well… if I had access to my library I could show you the moves of trickery your race is able to perform, but I can name a few off the top of my head: Confuse Ray, Mean Look, Will-o-wisp, Shadow Sneak - the list goes on and on.”

Sighing in defeat, the Sableye walked over to a mountain and laid down on its side, reaching behind her to take a chunk of the tip off and nibble on it. “I want to fight, though. I wanna be strong.”

“Alright listen, you’re strong in the fact that you can make other Pokemon eat their fists. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s the strongest - all that matters is who has the best tactics. Strength is useless without an effective way to employ it.”

Sapphira groaned and went through a growing spurt, and a BIG one at that. “So you’re saying that you and your ‘tactics’ could beat a giant like me?” The Sableye said, growing to tower over the Mawile, who only came up to her knee in comparison to the three mile tall Sapphira.

Amelia smirked. “Yes.” She replied, dashing forward and throwing a powerful kick into the Sableye’s lower right leg. Her balance suddenly lost, Sapph found herself toppling to the ground and crushing the nearby mountain under her body. Getting back on her feet, Sapph scanned the ground for Amelia but lost all track of her. Something crawled on her back, to which she reacted by clawing behind her. A shadow fell over the Sableye, who looked up and saw Amelia falling down with her fists bunched together, glowing with Fairy magicks. Amelia slammed her fist straight into Sapph’s forehead. The impact was huge, enough to knock the Sableye out without a second’s delay.

To be continued…